


I’ll Tell You the Truth, But Never Goodbye

by Liv_Hates_Olives



Series: Help Me Hold On To You [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Post/During S8E6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 22:08:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21936271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liv_Hates_Olives/pseuds/Liv_Hates_Olives
Summary: After the council meeting, Arya finds herself wandering the abandoned ruins of King’s Landing; the rubble isn’t the only thing she finds there.
Relationships: Arya Stark/Gendry Waters
Series: Help Me Hold On To You [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1644085
Comments: 38
Kudos: 144





	I’ll Tell You the Truth, But Never Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to obsessivewriter and yanak324 for being so kind and supportive when I showed you this! I really do appreciate it!
> 
> Title is from “Daylight” by Taylor Swift!

In the wake of the burning, when all was said and done, Arya supposed what she mourned the most was the destruction of the city, all of the people and the buildings, all of the homes. The Red Keep could burn all she wanted, it wasn’t any uglier now than it had been when she’d first entered it all those years ago: ugly and corrupted and broken. 

The only difference now was that everyone saw how corrupted and broken it was, and that gave her some small satisfaction in the face of all of it, glad that Cersei and the Mountain and all of those other silly players in that wretched game had burnt along with it. 

But then she thought of Sandor, dying in that building, dying as he was killing his brother as the Red Keep burned down. All of the things he hated most surrounded him there in his last moments, and then she wasn’t so pleased. 

Watching it all here, though, in the distance among the ruins of the city streets, the Dragon Queen dead and King’s Landing silent, she could almost pretend that he was at peace, like the city. 

That she was at peace too. 

Ash and rubble marred every surface, walls crumbled to the ground, and every body she saw looked like a statue, smooth and untouched like marble. There was no chill crawling up her skin as she walked, no fear that they might rise up yet again. 

Just loneliness. 

They said a Targaryen alone in the world was a terrible thing, and maybe a lone wolf was just as terrible. 

No answer to her cries, only her and the statues for company. 

But in her line of vision, she only spotted one real statue, a head larger than the rest, head ripped clean off from the bust. It was only when she got closer that she recognized the face, when she realized, with a start, what it was.

The statue of Baelor. 

The statue she’d hidden behind as she sat and watched as Joffrey gave the order to execute her father. Once so grand and tall, a fearsome thing to behold, and now all that remained of it was left discarded on the floor, forgotten, beheaded. 

What terrible irony. 

When she looked down at that face she saw the face of her father, a clear blue sky disrupted by a flock of birds, heard their cries and the cheer of the crowd through Yoren’s hand clamped over her ear.

She tilted her head to turn back up and closed her eyes for a moment, unsure if she wanted to remember or to forget. When she opened them again, she turned to see Gendry a little ways away from where she was, looking at her and the statue head, a question being posed on his furrowed eyebrows and pursed lips. 

And she was tired, just so tired, and she didn’t have it in her to make some smart quip at him, so instead she just tilted her head slightly to her right and looked back at him, a silent invitation. 

He took it, and walked closer until he stood next to her, until she could feel his body heat. A beat. 

Gendry turned to look at her, at the ruin and destruction around them. “All hail the new King of Westeros,” he said dryly, “King of the ashes, too.” 

She looked up at him, huffed a little and rolled her eyes. “All hail the new Lord of Storm’s End,” she returned sardonically. He looked at her, bemused, before releasing a breath with a faint smile. 

“Gods, and to think all those years ago I used to live here in these streets with my mother and apprentice for Tobho Mott, all to end up here.” 

“Takes quite a long road to get home, doesn’t it?” she mused. For so long, she’d run, hidden, _killed_ to get back home, to Winterfell, and in the end she’d left again to go run and hide and kill some more. 

He turned to face her properly, and his eyes were giving a speech in trying to tell her something but all he said was “I suppose it does.” She wasn’t sure what to do with it, the unsaid words spoken so clearly in his eyes and the warmth seeping into her bones and her cheeks, so she distracted herself instead. 

“Do you miss them?” She asked. “Tobho? Your mother?”

He paused, then swallowed. “I do miss them,” he admitted, “I just never had time to miss them.”

“Me too,” she sighed. There had never been time to truly mourn them, only enough time to move from place to place, from tragedy to tragedy. Just as he had.

What an odd pair they made, two stubborn, hotheaded, lonely orphans, caught up in a war so far removed from them and yet centered around them at the same time. They were more alike that she had ever thought.

Maybe that had been why she was always so drawn to him from the beginning; because they were so alike, deep down, beyond whatever highborn or lowborn status they had.

Because sometimes it was easier to mourn together than to mourn alone.

“Do you have time to mourn them now?” She asked.

He snorted, then shook his head slightly, a bit resigned. “I’m too busy learning how to use a fork.”

She scoffed. “And how is that going?”

“About as well as the rest of all the lording is going.”

“You’ll get better.”

“I know. But right now, I just want to say goodbye to these streets. To all the people who lived here.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“Is that why you were staring at what’s left of Baelor the Blessed?” There was a bit of wryness in the way he said it, a little spark of amusement. At that, she jerked her head back from the ground to face him, barely inches away from him as he raised his eyebrows, awaiting her explanation.

Arya bit her lip, and her gaze flickered to the head with reluctance before jumping back to meet his eyes. She could never seem to lie to those eyes.

“I was watching from the Statue of Baelor when my father was executed,” she said haltingly. 

She’d never said that out loud before, and somehow that made it all more real when she finally did. Gendry nodded slightly, looking back down at the statue’s head. “Yoren found me after, he said my father had told him to get me out,” Arya continued, “It all happened so fast. My father, he’s—he’s why Cersei and Ilyn Payne were on my list.” 

“Is that why you went back to King’s Landing? To kill Cersei?” Gendry asked, looking back at her, eyes searching her for an answer to the unspoken question: why did you go?

She swallowed, then nodded. “I didn’t get to kill her, though; Sandor stopped me. He—he told me that if I went with him, went after Cersei and the Mountain, I’d die, here, in King’s Landing, in the Red Keep. He wanted me to live.” Her voice was calm, and controlled; if she wasn’t careful, it’d all end up leaking out of her, all of the emotions and pain she’d felt since that fateful day in King’s Landing, when the birds flew up into the sky and the crowd cheered at her father’s beheading. 

When she lost the first member of her pack.

“Well, he succeeded, didn’t he? I mean, you’re here, in King’s Landing, still, but alive, at least.” Arya nodded, and looked back at him. She needed to tell him now, now, while she could still do it face to face; she needed to say goodbye. 

She gave him a smile, wan and bittersweet. “He did. He wanted me to live, so I’m going to live. But I—” Arya took a breath, then exhaled, bracing herself, “I can’t do that here, in Westeros.” 

He tilted his head at her, confusion evident on his face. “What do you mean? Why not?”

“I mean that I can’t live in Westeros, if everywhere I go, I’m surrounded by ghosts. In King’s Landing, I see my father, see Sandor, see the ghosts of all of the people I saw perish by dragonfire. If I go to the Riverlands, I see Robb’s body, see the wolf sewn onto his head, see the Red Wedding happening all over again; and if I go to Winterfell, all I can see are the army of the dead, the place that was once my home, home to the rest of my family, too. Every place is as ridden with ghosts as Harrenhal,” Arya murmured bitterly. 

“But what about Dorne? The Eyrie? The Stormlands?” he counted off, with an edge to his voice as he continued that spoke of stubbornness, insistence, and maybe a little desperation, too. 

She shook her head again. “All I am to anyone here is Arya Stark, the Bringer of the Dawn, the cousin of  _ Aegon Targaryen _ .” The words tasted bitter on her tongue, because it didn’t feel right, he was  _ Jon. _ Jon Snow, Ned Stark’s bastard, her brother, her  _ pack _ . Not Aegon Targaryen, the heir to the Seven Kingdoms. Just the boy who’d grown up in Winterfell, who had her father’s hair and face like her, who’d given her Needle before they’d parted ways so long ago. 

She couldn’t stomach being Aegon Targaryen’s cousin, she just wanted to be Jon Snow’s sibling, to be the little girl he’d call “little sister” and whose hair he’d mussed. But she couldn’t be that anymore, not in Westeros, at least. “I don’t… I don’t want to be that.”

“You’re not. Not to me. You’re Arry, not any of that other stuff.”

She glanced up at him and sighed, before turning her gaze to the side. “Arry, the daughter of the dead King’s Hand, the girl from Winterfell, the highborn  _ lady _ .” She muttered sullenly, a bitter smile on her face. A beat.

“And family, too.” 

The words were soft, quiet, but out here in the otherwise silent ruins, they rang as loudly as the bells. 

Those words made her want to cry, or run away, or scream at him, or kiss him, and she wasn’t sure which one she wanted to do more, so instead she just stood there, stock still, mouth parted open, grey eyes meeting blue, as a million thoughts reeled in her head at once. 

“I can’t do that to you,” she croaked, once she’d absorbed what he’d said. She watched with guilt as his eyebrows furrowed and his adam’s apple bobbed. “I don’t want to hurt you like that, because—because I can’t be your family when I’m not even sure I know how to be Arya Stark.”

Gendry sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, and she could practically see him fighting with the urge to argue with her. He opened them again. Hurt and frustration burned in those eyes, and she wasn’t sure she could stand to see it so clear on his face, so instead she distracted herself with his next question, “Where will you go, then? Essos? The Wall?”

Arya shook her head. “West of Westeros,” she corrected, a glint in her eye, her voice brimming with the promise of adventure. It made her feel a bit more like herself again, the girl who’d found such wonder in the unknown, in the adventure. “I’ve never been there before—no one’s been there before. There can’t be any ghosts there, at least, none of mine.”

He was silent for a moment, features stony. “I see.” And for a moment, Arya thought that this was it, this was the last conversation she would ever have with Gendry, this story had come to a close—

”Will you ever come back?”

—and at that, relief washed over her, a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding had been let out. 

“Yes,” she said, without a bit of uncertainty. Someday, without doubt, she would come home, when her ghosts had gone, either disappeared with time or had been defeated by her own hands, she could come back home, to her family: Jon, Sansa, Bran, and the stupid, bullheaded boy standing in front of her now.

“I’m sure there shall be a feast held by King Bran and Queen Sansa when that day comes,” Gendry halfheartedly teased. “The return of the Bringer of the Dawn, they’ll call it.”

Arya scoffed. “I’d prefer it to just be the return of Arya Stark, personally.” She quirked an eyebrow. “Will you be there? With your lady wife, and a babe at her breast?”

At that, he chuckled, gave a laugh; the real kind, the kind that made the skin around his eyes crinkle and his eyes light up. “I can’t promise the lady wife and the babe at her breast, but aye. Aye, I’ll be there.”

“Good,” Arya said, simply, clearly. She meant it. “Goodbye, Gendry.”

Gendry’s mouth was parted open, like he still had something to say, but instead, he said, “Goodbye, Arya.” With that, the two turned and went their separate ways, her to the docks, and him to the city gates.

But after a few steps, she found herself turning around to face him again, and he was doing the same. They met each other’s eyes, her steely grey meeting his ocean blue, and Arya realized, with a start, just how much still remained unsaid between them, how many things never left her mouth and how many questions she wanted to ask, and she suspected it was the same for him as well. 

They stood like that for a few moments, frozen in place, unable to do or say anything; but then, he said something, and it took barely a second to say, but it felt like it would echo in Arya’s mind forever, just like it had the first time: 

“I love you.”

“I still love you,” he continued, “and I still will love you, I just wanted you to know.”

It made the corners of Arya’s lips tilt up. “I love you too,” she said honestly, and it felt like another small piece of Arya Stark was coming back together as she said it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah so the title doesn’t fit perfectly but I still like it! Anyways, what’d you think? Any comments, kudos, and feedback is greatly appreciated!
> 
> (Also my first fic so they’re extra appreciated)
> 
> I swear, I wrote this thing like six months ago in one go swearing it would never see the light of day, and now the title is from a song called Daylight. Strange, the passage of time.
> 
> Thank you for reading! I hope you liked it! If you want to chat with me on tumblr, my username is livhatesolives!


End file.
